Fawn Hall Oliver North's Secretary

Fawn Hall served as Oliver North's secretary on the National Security Council staff from February 1983 until November 1986, when North was fired and Hall was reassigned. Although Hall knew that North was enlisting financial support for the Contras, she did not join him in meetings or phone calls and knew few operational details. However, she did participate in his theft, alteration, and destruction of official documents.

For that reason, Walsh provided her with immunity in exchange for testimony during the early period of his investigation, given her limited role in the Iran-Contra Affairs and her firsthand knowledge of North's crimes. Ultimately, her reluctant testimony implicated North in two ways. First, she revealed that on November 21, 1986, when North found out that the Department of Justice was conducting an inquiry into Iran-Contra matters, North stole NSC documents showing that he violated the Boland restrictions on aid to the Contras. He then wrote down changes to be made to the documents and gave them to Hall to edit, which she did. That evening, she saw North pulling documents from his files and shredding them. As she recalled, “As [North] pulled documents from each drawer and placed them on top of the shredder, I inserted them into the shredder.” As such, she was a key witness in demonstrating that North altered and destroyed documents relevant to congressional investigators and to the Independent Counsel.